The Devil in the White City by Erik LarsonRead about the other entries on the list.
Hollywood in its darkest dreams could not come up with something as lurid as this true story of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the killer who prowled its grounds. The story is told through the eyes of two men: the fair’s renowned architect, Daniel Burnham, and Dr. H. H. Holmes, the cold-blooded, blue-eyed murderer widely regarded as America’s first urban serial killer. In the prologue, titled “Evils Imminent,” the author tells us: “Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow. In the end it is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black.” So what’s so scary about this story? It really happened. –Robert Abitbol
The Devil in the White City is among Thomas Harding's eight favorite true crime books, Graham Moore's six favorite books about technology, Jeff Somers's eight top true crime books, Dell Villa's top five literary escapes to American cities, and Randy Dotinga's five favorite historical true-crime books from the last decade.
--Marshal Zeringue
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